Small businesses struggle with poor policy in place

June 19, 2013

Jobs data for May left economists even more worried about the sputtering of the already painfully slow economic recovery. Automatic Data Processing said private-sector jobs in the U.S. increased by only 135,000 jobs last month - considerably fewer than what analysts expected.

National Federation of Independent Business figures showed small businesses reported an average loss of 0.04 workers per firm. Twelve percent of small businesses in the NFIB's survey reduced headcount in May, while 79 percent were able to make no change.

"We have only to look to Washington as to the reasons why," according to NFIB chief economist William Dunkelberg. Even government figures on initial claims for unemployment are misleading, as Dunkelberg points out they are due more to a slowdown in the number of employers cutting jobs than in the increase in those hiring more workers.

Measures like Obamacare do not support a healthy economy, but, rather, provide "incentives to increase the use of temporary and part-time workers," as the NFIB reminds us.

Small business owners already on the ropes, battling government regulation and skepticism about the truth of any economic recovery, have not felt the relief that Wall Streeters addicted to the Federal Reserve's easy money policies have been enjoying.

Instead, they wait for the only thing that will improve the health of their own economies: more sales. Customers who are too afraid, and still have too little disposable income cannot help them get there.

Politicians in Washington and economic policy-makers across the country are obsessed with shoring up the entities they have deemed "too big to fail." In nursing that obsession, they appear to have agreed to ignore the businesses they think are too small to succeed, leaving those folks to their own devices.

The least this administration and its followers can do is to get out of their way.